E&P Focus 2010 Stripper Well Consortium Aids America’s
Small Producers
The Stripper Well Consortium (SWC) is an industry-driven consortium
focused on the development, demonstration and deployment of new
technologies needed to improve the production performance of natural
gas and petroleum stripper wells. The term stripper well denotes a well
producing no more than 10 barrels of oil per day or 60,000 cubic feet of
gas per day. One out of every six barrels of crude produced today comes
from a stripper well. Over 85 percent of the total number of U.S. oil wells
are now classified as stripper wells. Together, these nearly 400,000 wells
produce around 800,000 barrels of oil per day or nearly 10 percent of
lower-48 production. Many of these wells are marginally economic and at
risk of being prematurely abandoned, leaving significant amounts of oil
unrecovered. In addition, there are some 320,000 natural gas stripper wells
in the U.S., accounting for over 1.7 trillion cubic feet of annual production, or
9 percent of the natural gas produced in the lower 48. (Continued on page 3.)
